ExtremeRavens Posted November 27 Posted November 27 Jamal Lewis used to call his old running backs coach at the start of each new season. “Who you got? What kind of backs you got?” he’d ask, pestering Anthony Lynn. Lewis worked under Lynn in Cleveland, the swan song of his career after seven illustrious years in Baltimore. With those phone calls from retirement, he was keeping a careful eye on the evolution of the position. “They all look the same,” Lynn would say, disparagingly. “Ain’t no Jamal Lewis.” Few running backs, now or ever, were like Lewis, a freight train at 5 feet 11 and 245 pounds. In 2003, he rushed for 2,066 yards in 16 regular-season games. Only eight running backs in NFL history have eclipsed 2,000 yards in a single season, and Lewis did it averaging 24 carries per game, including a Week 2 firestorm in which he broke the then-single-game rushing record with 295 yards on 30 touches against the Browns. Such volume is unfathomable in 2024. There’s not a running back in the league right now averaging 21 carries. And few, if any, could be considered the cornerstone of an offense. Lewis likes to say his era — before the ground game was truncated by pass-heavy schemes — was the last of a dying breed. He’ll concede there were a few stragglers into the 2010s. But when Lewis watches Ravens running back Derrick Henry or Saquon Barkley of the Philadelphia Eagles, “it’s like the 2000s again.” When the league’s top two rushing leaders meet Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium, it might feel more like a Y2K party. “You can’t name me a back, probably [outside] of those two guys,” Lewis said, “that there’s a defense out there saying, ‘Man I just do not want any more of him. Please do not give him the ball.’ You got defenses complaining. … You don’t have those guys that are going to just beat up on the defense to the point where they just don’t want no more.” Henry is stiff-arming Father Time among the NFL’s best in his age-30 season. He’s flirted with the 200-yard mark twice and found the end zone a league-high 15 times in 12 weeks. Running the ball has been a strength in Baltimore for years, “but this is different,” coach John Harbaugh said. “He is adding a dimension that we have not had before. You go back to Jamal Lewis, maybe.” The Ravens signed Henry in March to a two-year deal worth up to $16 million. At 6-3, he’s the tallest tailback in the league. Like Lewis, he’s a 247-pound tanker carrying appendages like an All-Pro linebacker. Henry has 1,325 rushing yards this season after totaling 140 in a 30-23 win over the Chargers on Monday night, and he’s averaging about 18 carries per game. “Just seeing a back of my stature, my size, and everything else being able to adjust to an offense in 2024,” Lewis said, “that’s impressive.” In March, Henry made a rare media appearance on “The Pivot Podcast.” The camera zoomed in on co-host and former NFL linebacker Channing Crowder, who leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed as if he’d been chewing on this question for some time. “Were you born too late?” At every level of football, Henry said, someone argued his stature was better suited for defense. He rebutted with a long receipt of thick running backs from the early aughts (including Lewis), admitting he always fell back on wanting to be like them. Times change, but Henry’s aspirations don’t. “I embrace it,” he said, “because I know people are just waiting to see when it’s gon’ be over.” John Makely / Baltimore SunOn Sept. 14, 2003, Ravens running back Jamal Lewis rushed for a then-NFL record 295 yards against the Cleveland Browns. (Staff file) That reality doesn’t seem so close. On a temperate September night in Baltimore, Henry finished 1 yard shy of his first 200-yard outing since 2022. One nasty cutback on his first touch fissured Buffalo’s defense for an 87-yard score. Three weeks later in Tampa Bay, another 80-yarder highlighted his 169-yard outburst. All Lewis could think about was how the oldest starting tailback in the league could still find a third gear in open space. “He looks like he trains like an animal,” Lewis said. “He looks like he’s ready to get to the playoffs and eat.” There’s similar discourse happening a short ride up I-95. Barkley has been a mystifying chess piece for the Eagles, winners of seven straight. Sunday night, he shredded the Rams’ defense with such devastation (255 yards on 26 attempts and two touchdowns) that some have started to wonder if he might break the status quo and be the first non-quarterback Most Valuable Player since Adrian Peterson in 2012. Even Henry couldn’t break that glass ceiling when he rushed for 2,027 yards in 2020. “Being a running back today ain’t sexy,” Lewis said. “But at the same time, it’s gonna win you games.” That first part is true until it isn’t. When the Eagles played the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 9, Lewis was at home in Atlanta. That was the Sunday that Barkley broke the internet with a gravity-defying backward hurdle. Lewis stood up from his couch, mouth agape. “Not only has that never been done before,” Lewis said, “but I would have never even thought to [try that].” Barkley fits into Lewis’ “last of a dying breed” mold. He’s the closest thing to a bell cow running back, leading the league in touches. At 20 per game, he’s up to 1,392 yards on the season. With six games left on Philadelphia’s schedule, he needs to average 101 yards to hit 2,000. @saquon GO CRAZY GANGSTA !! — Derrick Henry (@KingHenry_2) November 25, 2024 Like Henry’s conviction about sizable running backs, Barkley isn’t afraid to snap back at how running backs are talked about by leaning on his predecessors rather than his peers. The 27-year-old who underwent ACL surgery in 2020 told The Philadelphia Inquirer this summer that he has no intention of slowing down because Marcus Allen was still Pro Bowl-worthy in his early 30s and because Barry Sanders, who retired at 31, left the game in his prime. “There’s this weird thing with running backs right now,” Barkley said. “Is it a difficult position to play? Yes. Do you take wear and tear? Yes. But who are you or anyone else to tell me how long I can play the game? I call [BS].” The weird thing he’s referring to is the devaluation of running backs. They’re replaceable and production is preferred in parts. Lewis, conversely, used to insist on 15 carries before halftime. Now, he said, offensive coordinators can’t get a head coaching job running the football like that. Consider this other weird thing with running backs right now: the three most productive backs in the NFL signed in free agency away from teams who either didn’t want them or didn’t want to pay them. Henry, Barkley and Josh Jacobs (Green Bay) are putting conventional wisdom on the stand and the defense is arguing it’s a running back renaissance on the merit that their former teams are a combined 7-26. For a position front offices have spent the better part of the past decade moving their chips away from, is this potentially a tipping point? Can Henry and Barkley reset the market? “Yeah, they can,” Lewis said. “But what they can’t change is the guys that are representing the position in college. … To be effective, like a Derrick Henry or like myself, you have to be a featured back. Featured, meaning I am the starting running back and as a backup, you come in when I get tired or if there’s a special play. [That’s] durability and being able to withstand and be productive throughout the game. Now they’re getting that out of two backs, maybe three, versus one.” Added Henry: “We just want to go out there and do our job — do our job effectively [and] show that the position matters. And hopefully we’ve been doing that well enough to add value for the future of this position.” Ravens running back Derrick Henry is seeking to become the first player to twice rush for 2,000 yards in a season. (Ryan Sun/AP) Lewis’ son, Jazz, is a freshman wide receiver at Chamblee High School in Georgia. He already has a scholarship offer from Memphis while having unofficially visited Clemson, Georgia and his dad’s alma mater, Tennessee. So the older Lewis is fairly plugged into college ball, the best predictor of the future of the NFL. There are a finite amount of workhorses in college football. Fifteen backs have 200-plus carries. Boise State’s Heisman Trophy candidate Ashton Jeanty leads a four-pack with more than 250. The rest of the field operates by committee and utilizes the position like a quasi-slot receiver capable of creating mismatches with linebackers. “As long as that’s still going on, you’re not gonna have a Derrick Henry coming out of college,” Lewis said, pointing to the last running back to win a Heisman. “That’s why it feels like the last of a dying breed.” In Sunday’s game, Lewis is eagerly awaiting what was commonplace 20 years ago and a rarity now: a featured matchup of two elite running backs. Back then, Lewis used to think about his counterpart as much, if not more, than the defense. Those twice-a-year meetings with Cincinnati’s Corey Dillon and Pittsburgh’s Jerome Bettis were always circled on the calendar. Ravens Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis would say, “Oh, Jamal, we got Bettis this week. We got your back.’” Henry said he doesn’t think that way. But he has an appreciation for the other “franchise players making a big impact,” he said. “That’s the cool thing about it, just going against guys that you want to see do well.” Henry paused for a moment. “Except when they play us.” In 2024, Jamal Lewis types are hard to come by — never mind when two occupy opposite sidelines. There might not be many more Sundays like this one in Baltimore. “I gotta get to that game,” Lewis said. “I hope I can get me one of those 22 [jerseys] when I go up there to visit.” Have a news tip? Contact Sam Cohn at scohn@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/samdcohn. Eagles running back Saquon Barkley jumped into the NFL MVP conversation with a dominant performance Sunday night against the Rams. (Ryan Sun/AP) View the full article Quote
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